Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 8th Jan 2007 18:08 UTC
BSD and Darwin derivatives "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected. The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good news is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed. At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
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RE[10]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by sbergman27 on Tue 9th Jan 2007 13:30 UTC in reply to "RE[9]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
sbergman27
Member since:
2005-07-24

"""The reality is your anti-GPL because you have a preference for Microsoft.products."""

There really should be a corollary to Godwin's Law to cover this type of "argument".

Sometimes I wonder if I was not too rash in dismissing a former OSNews subscriber's characterization of GPL supporters as a "cult".

And BTW, I think you meant "you're".

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RE[11]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks
by cyclops on Tue 9th Jan 2007 14:18 in reply to "RE[10]: GPL sucks...BSD rocks"
cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

no I definitely meant you. Although you can definitely find grammatical and spelling errors in my other posts, which I would be happy for you to peruse, as its an area I constantly try to improve, and one of the reasons why I post here.

My point is quite simple; look at the topic. A Gentoo developer wants to make FreeSBD available to build from its source, and has hit a licensing issue.

I see little there that would interest anyone, other than those who want such a thing.

The license problem in question has *nothing* to do with GPL its *entirely* about an advertising clause in BSD. Potentially it has implications for binary only software that uses BSD licensed code in their products like Apple or Microsoft.

So when I see this thread being used as an excuse to troll an anti-gpl rant. I ask myself why, having read his previous posts, and his current posts. I came to a conclusion. I can't think of another one.

Edited 2007-01-09 14:22

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